


Kiss With A Fist Is Better Than None

by Setback



Category: Sentinels of the Multiverse (Card Game)
Genre: F/M, It's been like two months since this idea actually happened with the help of a friend, Welcome to the manic writing phase before I don't post anything for another month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 04:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14276937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setback/pseuds/Setback
Summary: Ever wonder what would happen if Maia and Tyler met before the Freedom Five? Because it isn't a meet cute by any means.





	Kiss With A Fist Is Better Than None

If anyone tried to sue, Maia would maintain that she hadn’t meant to break Tyler Vance’s nose. She hadn’t, and most lawyers would have a hard time proving that someone of her stature could or would willingly break someone else’s nose in a crowded night club. In her defense, she’d been skeptical at first that his advances were completely innocent. A fair assumption in Rook City when she’d never seen him before and he’d spent most of the night on the outskirts of the dance floor watching her and the group of girls that had managed to drag her out of her dorm for a night on the town. Even if they could prove intent, Maia knew she had a fair shot at claiming self defense when she’d been attacked not even a year earlier in the same neighborhood. And…well, if she were being honest, it had been an accident - just an extremely embarrassing one. Granted, she doesn’t think anyone, not even Vance, is going to sue, but still…

For all the training she’d received since waking up from her coma, she hadn’t been able to fix that she had two left feet when it came to dancing. Complicated martial art drills didn’t phase her in the slightest, but even the slowest waltz left her stepping on toes. It’s why she wasn’t one to go out for nights on the town and why she tended to socialize on the outskirts of galas that she attended with her parents.

Maia Montgomery wasn’t a dancer, but she’d still let herself be talked into joining her small friend group on the dance floor of the club after a few drinks had been smuggled into her hands. She was just on the edge of tipsy when she started dancing - having had a brief pep talk with herself that she still deserved to experience a normal college night out after everything that happened. She hadn’t been planning on going out on patrol as the Wraith tonight anyway, not unless something absolutely dire cropped up on the police scanner in her room. 

She’s still sharp as a tack as she joins the crowd on the dance floor. Between the flailing of limbs, belonging to herself and her friends, she’s able to notice the feeling of being watched and pinpoint the source as a young man with close cropped hair that had to be around her age, if not a little older. He carried himself like some of her instructors, she notes carefully - side eyeing him while trying to enjoy herself - though his face flushes when they make eye contact and when one of his companions nudges him in the ribs and half shouts words of encouragement.

It doesn’t take long before he’s making his way through the crowd looking down to her with a half smile and an expression that Maia’s only seen on extremely dopey dogs. Someone had some liquid courage before they’d come over.

“Tyler Vance,” he shouts over the music, joining Maia in her space as her friends part around her to give him adequate space.

She smiles in return waiting for a lull to introduce herself. “First break from bootcamp?” She asks, one brow raised slyly. Even somewhat intoxicated she hadn’t missed the signs of someone who was clearly military but didn’t have a lot of experience. From there it hadn’t been hard to guess that Tyler Vance had come from the bootcamp just outside of the city and was probably enjoying a night out with his fellow recruits.

To Tyler it doesn’t seem quite as obvious if the shocked expression on his face is anything to go by. Maia laughs, nose wrinkling as he stammers out that she’s right but he isn’t entirely sure how she was able to tell. 

“Let me have some secrets. Everyone loves a good mystery,” is Maia’s response, whispered into Vance’s ear before she pulls away and slips away from him and her friends to meld into the rest of the crowd.

It’s fun to watch Tyler Vance chase after her as she moves around on the dance floor. The grace instilled through her training raises its head as she starts a game of hide and seek in the club. Vance is no slouch either, as he’s able to catch sight of her and head in her direction - just slow enough that she’s able to slip away again. She’s laughing, genuinely laughing, for the first time in almost a year when he’s finally able to catch up and pulls her into a dance.  
He has the wrong idea if he thinks the same grace that she showed hiding from him will show up now. But Maia is content to let him lead for the time being while she lets herself get lost in the most fun she’s had in a long time. Which is probably why she shouldn’t drop her guard so much while she’s dancing and bordering on tipsy. 

Thinking it over, Maia still isn’t entirely sure how it happened but one moment she was laughing as Tyler spun her around and the next there was a loud crack and he was covering his nose with both hands as blood spills between his fingers and his eyes started to water. 

“Damn, you uh…you have a nice right hook Maia.” He jokes as she ushers him to a less crowded corner of the club and shoos his hands away so she can get a better idea of the damage. Definitely broken.

She’s having a hard time hiding her panic as she rushes to the bar and gets a handful of ice for Vance until they can get himself to a hospital because he isn’t confident enough in himself or his companions to reset it and she already broke it so she doubts he’ll let her try to fix it. It must be extremely obvious that she’s about two minutes away from being in worse shape than he is though because Vance continues to make nasally jokes making light of the situation.

“Do you think they’ll have to amputate?”

“Think I can get a silver prosthetic like that one guy?”

“We should bring you in for a demonstration one day.”

Until she’s laughing again while she sends out a quick text to the rest of her friends telling them that she’s heading back to the dorm because they’d want to go with her if she told them she was going to the hospital with a guy whose nose she just broke and she didn’t want their night out to end just because she was an admittedly horrible dancer. That and they’d be worried that she was going with a stranger. One that was currently laughing and wincing with a bloody and broken nose in a crowded night club - probably just as tipsy as she was before accidental violence sobered her up - but a stranger no less. 

“Come on you big lug, let’s get you some professional help.” She says, rolling her eyes and shouldering her way out into the cool night air and straight into another problem.

Right. One of her friends had made some kind of post announcing their presence at the club, she should have prepared herself for nosy reporters that have a lot more to question than her first public appearance off college campus since the attack when she comes out with a buzzed guy and his broken nose. Go figure that this would be her luck tonight of all nights.

And not that Maia needs one in her life but Vance turns into a knight in bloodied armor at the first flash of a camera, sobering up and shielding her from the cameras and shooting glares towards anyone that approaches for a question. If she shows up in the local papers, shadowed by the bloody soldier, so be it.

Explaining themselves at the hospital is another ordeal when the security gets involved at the first mention of someone being hit before they’re able to get out that it was a complete and total accident, laughing nervously all the while until the guard returns to his post.

And if anyone at bootcamp asks Vance why is nose is a little crooked after the weekend, he jokes that he had a run in with the city’s newest vigilante without knowing exactly how right he is. But that’s just his luck before he’s in the Bunker suit and actually meets the Wraith in person for the first time. At least that’s his assumption until he’s telling the story to the rest of the Freedom Five when they start talking about the starts of their careers and he notices that Rook City’s protector wrinkles their nose as they laugh alongside the rest of the team.


End file.
